by E. M. Moore
Fucking Dupre. How the hell did he look so badass?
Travis shot his hand forward, red light bursting through the palm of his hand. He gasped, staring at his hand as the magic rocketed toward Dupre. Dupre simply waved it off before laughing, his voice much darker, more sinister than it had been. “You’re no match for me anymore. Jay’s given me what I wanted, and then some.” His hands fisted at his side, the blue flames licking up his body and spreading toward his head. His back bowed, then he hunched over, sending a blue spiraling burst of magic Travis’s way. I shot my hand forward, just in time to send it away before slamming Travis in the chest.
He blinked rapidly, but I turned my gaze back toward Dupre. “Where’s Randy? If you’ve hurt him, I swear—”
Another chorus of dark laughter emanated from him in echoes. “Randy is somewhere else right now. We needed to ensure your cooperation, Norah. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to take care of.” He flicked his hands out, and small bolts of electricity shot through his fingers, knocking us on our asses.
I landed hard, then pushed myself back up with my palms just in time to see Dupre burn up with blue fire until he disappeared before our very eyes.
Liam scrambled to his feet. His sneakers crunched against broken glass as he fled inside the shop. After a moment, he came out, his head hanging low. I helped Gabe to his feet, and he stood unsteady. When he’d fell, his head had knocked into one of the old school streetlamps.
Liam swallowed. “He’s gone.”
“Fuck,” Travis screamed, turning around in a circle, his forearms like sinewy vines. He looked like he wanted to punch something, but his options weren’t good, so he resided himself to running his hands through his hair.
“Where would they have taken him? We need to get him back,” I said, stating the fucking obvious.
“He could be anywhere,” Gabe said, touching the cut on his forehead. “With the type of magic Dupre just displayed, he could have transported him literally anywhere.”
My body pulsated, strung out. Travis took me by the shoulders and angled me back toward the Jeep. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, looking around. The city was waking up even more with each following second. “Come on, guys, let’s move it.”
“We need to find him,” I said, whispering more to myself than to anyone else.
“I’ll get in contact with Walter. He’ll help us, Norah.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Granny,” Liam said, his eyes rounding. He looked over at me. “You said Granny finds people.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. He was right. She did, and she was good at it too. “Is there any way to get her to come to us? I’m not waiting on her sorry ass to come visit me in a dream.”
Travis nodded, pushing me toward the Jeep. A knot formed in my stomach. It twisted, and turned, missing a linked piece. I couldn’t even feel Randy anymore.
22
“At least we were on the right track,” Gabe said, lighting a candle at one of the pentagram points.
Not really, I grumbled to myself. We hadn’t been sure Dupre was even involved with it, and we didn’t listen to how sure Randy had been that Madame Serena was involved. She just seemed like a harmless old kook. A nice, harmless old kook at that, too. God! I couldn’t believe I’d talked to her several times and never noticed anything bad going on with her. What the hell?
Liam rubbed his forehead. He’d been quiet, not unusual when you remembered how close he and Randy were. “This might not work that well,” Liam said. “We really need five of us.”
Travis glanced over at me. “I’d usually agree, but I just saw what Norah did to our powers. We might not have a long time with Granny, so just ask her to find Randy and let’s go from there. Dupre said they wanted you, so what’s keeping him from doing something to Randy? Maybe not right away, but…” He shrugged, and I bit my lip. If Randy got hurt because of me… I couldn’t even think about it. It was too awful.
We stood on our points in the pentagram, and even though Randy wasn’t there, we still lit a green candle at his point. I stared at that spot, the flame dancing in the dark as I followed the instructions Liam rattled off earlier. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.
The Order didn’t usually stoop to such parlor tricks, but just because we were Enforcers didn’t mean we couldn’t do any of the other witchy powers we had. Desperate times, desperate measures.
“Well, gator on a biscuit!” Granny protested. I gasped. Her form had just turned solid in front of us, more solid than when she came through in a dream. She spun in a circle, looking at each of the guys with her dark eyebrows halfway up her forehead. When she got to me, she sighed. “Norah Girl, what in the hell are you doing? I’ve got—”
“Granny,” I said, interrupting her. “Something’s happened.”
Her eyes went wide with fear. “Are you okay?” Her gaze inspected every inch of me, but she couldn’t see the wounds on the surface, they were inside. My heart ached. We’d lost Randy. How could we have done that? Someone else should’ve went back into the shop with him. What were we thinking?
“I’m fine, Granny. It’s not me. It’s one of the other members of my coven. We need to find him. The bad guys took him. The medium you said tried to contact you, Madame Serena?”
Granny rolled her eyes at the mention of the word Madame.
“She’s involved. Somehow. She’s been killing innocent people, Granny, and now they have Randy. We need to get him back.”
She turned in a circle again. “Are these your coven—?”
“Granny!” I yelled. Damn, she was dead, but that didn’t mean we were. We were on a time crunch. “Please! We need your help right now. You’re so good at finding people.”
Her gaze flitted toward Travis, and he nodded at her.
“Fine,” she held her hands out and lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “I’ll do what I can Norah Girl. Send me his essence. It won’t be like trying to find you. That was easy.” She paused, then peeked an eye at me. “By the way, I knew I didn’t trust that bitch.”
I told the guys to close their eyes and think of Randy. To think about every little thing they could think of when it came to him. It would help her find him sooner. She nodded, her lips twitching as her eyes glazed over.
“I’ll get back to you.”
She disappeared, and the energy crackled out of the room like a slingshot. Its backlash was so epic I fell to my knees. Damn woman still knew how to make an exit.
“What does ‘I’ll get back to you’ mean?” Liam asked.
I shrugged. “You never know when it comes to Granny. I hope it means she’ll find him right away, but we can’t just sit around and wait. What’s the next logical step?”
“Madame Serena,” Travis said. “She’s involved, so she might know where they took Randy. I say we pay her a visit and make a few things clear, like how you’re supposed to use magic, and how you’re not.”
Liam slid his cell from his pocket and started typing into it. “Let me look up the owner of her website. I’m sure it’ll have her name and address associated with it.”
“That stuff is shared? It’s kind of private.”
“Do you have another idea?” he deadpanned.
That would be a negative.
I took a seat on the small bench near my point of the pentagram and held my head in my hands. ‘I’ll get back to you’ from Granny could come in many forms. She didn’t seem so confident at being able to find Randy quickly, but I knew she would find him. I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late when she did.
Randy
Strapped to a wooden chair, I had all I could do to keep my head up. The blast that fucker had hit me with had been one hell of a sucker punch. It’d taken the breath right out of my lungs, and then. Then, life went to even bigger shit.
I’d woken up in the living room. Yes, that living room. I recognized it instantly. The shag, brown rug. The tattered curtains with the film of dust over the f
ront window. My hands tied behind my back, and my legs tied together in front, I had all I could do to stare at the man in front of me. My stomach roiled. I hadn’t seen him in so long. He looked the same as in my nightmares. He was big. Not quite as big as me, his shoulders were expansive, wide like a linebacker. He was built like a truck. Not because he tried like I did, but because he just was. He swayed toward me, lowering himself to one knee to get in my face.
No. It couldn’t be. It was the same, but not. My father wasn’t anywhere near Salem anymore. If he was still here, I’d know. I didn’t play around when it came to my asshole of a father. You weren’t kicked around your whole life to leave things like this up to chance. If he’d come back, I’d know, but that didn’t mean I didn’t fall back into the same patterns I had as a kid. “No,” I said, shaking my head as the corner of my father’s lips tipped up. “Please don’t.”
“You deserve it, Randy. I don’t know how many times I have to punish you until you get it.”
I sniffed the air, thinking I could smell the faintest hint of my mother’s shampoo as she hid in the kitchen or the bathroom or in their bedroom like she always did. I almost couldn’t blame her. If she came out, he’d do it to her too. Sometimes, I even wished she wouldn’t come out. My mom was my mom. I didn’t want her hurt either.
But at other times, I was the kid. I wanted someone to protect me. Just someone. Anyone, really. In front of me, my legs morphed into short ones, just barely grazing the dirty carpet on the floor. My knees were bony, and weak, and I shivered from head-to-toe.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Randy?”
“I-I don’t know,” I stammered. My voice came out high, scared like a frightened boy.
“You know I don’t tolerate liars.”
I winced as a crack came forward. When it didn’t hit, I breathed out. My father was sadistic. He didn’t just like to hit me and get it over with. He liked to taunt. Every time he moved forward, he didn’t always make contact. He liked to keep me guessing, keep me worried about what was going to happen, and exactly when the pain was going to come.
“How old are you now, boy?”
“Eight,” I said, my voice scratchy as I felt a hot tear slide down my face.
Wait. I shook my head. That wasn’t fucking right. I was a grown ass man.
“Listen to me when I talk to you!”
My father lunged forward, his devil-like eyes pouring into me all the hatred the man had acquired his entire life. I reared back, but there was nowhere to go.
Around and around we went. He badgered me with questions about some supposed terrible thing I’d done. Most of the times, I just fessed up, yet it never did me that much good. He still would draw it out, taunt me with his near misses, until the sudden crack of pain would finally hit, and I’d almost feel relief from it all. When he finally did start to hit me, it was almost over then. I could sit back and wait for it to end, so I could stumble back to my room and lay in bed. I’d lay there for hours and hours, broken and bloody. It took her that long to get to me sometime. She never came right away. If she did, I would’ve just been subjected to it again, anyway. He’d roar about her babying me and how I needed to grow the fuck up and be a man.
Even when I was that young, I knew he was never the type of ‘man’ I ever wanted to be like. When I grew and grew, and took on his stature, I did everything in my power to differentiate myself from him. I marred my body. I didn’t think of it that way. I dressed it up with tattoos and muscles. I cut my hair short and pierced my nipple. I was not my father.
I was not my father.
“Are you even listening to me anymore?”
“Y-yes, Dad.”
I swallowed, my throat dry and ass practically numb. When would this be over? My head drooped, and he lunged at me again.
I recoiled so fast the chair rocked back, but all he did was kick the leg down and get in my face. “You make me sick, Randy. I want you to never forget that fact. You are nothing. You’ll never be anything, boy. You don’t deserve shit.”
His face shook in front of me, and spit had squeezed through the gaps in his teeth and hit my lips and cheek. I wanted to rub it off. I didn’t want any part of him on me.
Why didn’t he want me? Why wasn’t I good enough for him?
My fingers throbbed as the blood ran down to the tips. I watched him walk away and stretched them out. In front of me, my tiny knees quivered.
23
The Jeep squealed to a halt in front of an old house that looked even older. Most of the houses in Salem were kept up to some degree, but with Madame Serena’s house, it was practically falling down. The siding needed some repairs and a paint job. The front porch was sagging, and one of the shutters for the upstairs window was barely hanging on and twisted.
Liam barreled out of the Jeep as soon as Travis stopped. We ran up behind him, yelling out his name so he didn’t get too far ahead of us. Wasn’t he there when Randy took things too far? He could be the next one we lost to that. We had no idea what we were going to encounter when we got to Madame Serena’s.
Gabe blasted the door open, and we stepped inside. The door banged against the opposite wall and came flying back at us, but I pushed it back. Madame Serena jumped into our line of sight with a baseball bat in hand. She came at us, swinging.
A baseball bat? What in the actual fuck?
Liam stepped up, grabbed the handle of the baseball bat and ripped it from her grip. She cowered in front of him. “Please don’t,” she begged.
That stopped him in his tracks. He looked at us for some clue as to what to do next. Travis pushed ahead. He grabbed Madame Serena by the shoulders and pushed her into her living room, the floor creaking at our feet. When she fell back into the couch, she looked up. “Who-who are you?”
“Who are we? You just tried to bash our skulls in with a baseball bat and now you’re asking that question?”
Her gaze flitted around the room until it fell on me. “Norah? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
I stalked forward, my patience wearing extremely thin. “Cut the shit. We know what you’ve been doing. Where’s Randy?”
“Randy? I-I—” She looked around at the four of us for help, but we just stood over her, glaring down at her. There was no way she was getting past us. “I don’t know who that is.”
My hand shot in the air, and I pushed it toward her, but Travis knocked it out of the way. A blast of magic that would’ve hit her square in the chest, hit the table, shattering a lamp. Liam and Gabe turned toward me, their eyebrows raised.
Ignoring them, I turned back to the fake medium. “You need to start giving us answers. What’s with the victims?”
The shawl she always wore drifted off her shoulders as she dragged in breath after breath and then exhaled shakily. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. I swear to you, I didn’t.”
She blinked at me, her gaze flitting toward the broken lamp before returning.
Liam took a cautious step forward. “Tell us what happened.”
Serena ran a hand through her dyed-cranberry red hair. “I just wanted to finally do some good for once,” she said, her hands shaking. “My mom. I wanted to be my mom, actually. She was such a talented medium, you know, and I finally got the courage up to ask someone for help. He told me he could get me the powers I needed, and I agreed without thinking. I didn’t understand what was happening. Spirits started to visit me right away. I finally had the gift.”
“Man?” I asked.
Liam put a hand on my arm and gave me a gentle nudge back. When I looked at Madame Serena, I could tell she was afraid of me. Oops. You blow up one lamp and people start to fear you.
Gentle Liam, he raised his hand in an effort to show he wasn’t going to hurt her. He even sat next to her on the couch. “What was the man’s name?”
“Dupre,” Madame Serena said. “His name was Dupre.” She swallowed and looked at Liam. “I thought I was helping those people. It wasn’t until they start
ed dying that I realized I must’ve done something to them. I swear to you I never would’ve hurt anyone, I only wanted to help. I told him I wasn’t going to see any more people. I told him I was going to shut the shop right down because I was doing the exact opposite of what my mom used to do. They twisted my power. They made it bad.”
Her fear turned into anger, and a visible shift started in the room. She scratched at her back between her shoulder blades. She turned, trying to reach something, her arms flailing all over the place.
“It’s this tattoo! He won’t take it off me and now I don’t know who I am anymore. I just want to be me. I should’ve never asked them.” She stilled, turning hopeful eyes on me. “Can you get it off? Please. I know you have powers. Get this thing off me!”
She turned, and Liam sucked in a breath.
“What is it, Mate?”
“A familiar.”
Travis ran a hand through his dark hair. “A demonic familiar?”
Liam nodded. “It’s the serpent familiar. I recognize it from—”
“One of the books,” Travis said, finishing for him.
Liam pulled Serena’s shawl back up over the tattoo. “I don’t know how to get that off you, Serena. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry? We’re sorry?” I seethed. “No, we’re not. She made a deal with the bad guys and now Randy is gone.” I turned toward her. “Do you know where they are? Where’s Dupre staying?”
She reared back. “I only ever met them here or at the shop. I don’t know where they are. I didn’t check in yesterday, and I’ve been waiting for him to show up ever since.”
I looked around the room and saw that the windows were barricaded, boards nailed into the casing. Along with the baseball bat we’d easily taken away from her, there was also a set of knives on the coffee table.
